In order to view the XML file in Author view, the XML document must be associated with a CSS file that defines the way the XML file is rendered. The document can be edited as text, the XML markup being hidden by default.
Fast navigating the document content can be done using the Tab/Shift + Tab for advancing forward / backwards. The caret will be moved to the next/previous editable position. Entities and hidden elements will be skipped.
A left-hand side stripe paints a vertical thin light blue bar indicating the vertical span of the element found at caret position. Also a top stripe indicates the path from document root to the current element.
The last element is also highlighted by a thin light blue bar for easier identification. Clicking one element from the top stripe selects the entire element in the Editor view.
The Append child, Insert before and Insert after submenus allow to quickly insert new tags in the document at the place of the selected element. The Append child submenu lists the names of all the elements which are allowed by the schema associated with the current document as child of the current element. The effect is the same as typing the '<' character and selecting an element name from the popup menu offered by the content completion assistant. The Insert before and Insert after submenus list the elements which are allowed by the schema associated with the current document as siblings of the current element inserted immediately before respectively after the current element.
The Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete items of the popup menu execute the same actions as the Edit menu items with the same name on the elements currently selected in the stripe (Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete). The styles of the copied content is preserved by the Cut and Copy operations, for example the display:block property or the tabular format of the data from a set of table cells. The Paste before, Paste after and Paste as Child actions allow the user to insert an well-formed element before, after or as a child of the currently selected element.
The Toggle Comment item of the outline tree popup menu encloses the currently selected element of the top stripe in an XML comment, if the element is not commented, or removes the comment if it is commented.
Using the Rename Element action the selected element and the elements that have the same name as the current element can be renamed according with the options from the Rename dialog.
When working on a large document the folding support can be used to collapse some elements content leaving in focus only the ones you need to edit. Foldable elements are marked with a small triangle painted in the upper left corner. Hovering with the mouse pointer over that marker, the entire content of the element is highlighted by a dotted border for quick identification of the foldable area.
When working on a suite of documents that refer to one another(references, external entities, XInclude, DITA conref, etc), the linking support is useful for navigating between the documents. In the predefined customizations that are bundled with <oXygen/> XML Author links are marked with an icon representing a chain link:
. When hovering with the mouse pointer over the marker, the mouse pointer will change to indicate that the link can be followed and a tooltip will present the destination location. Clicking on a followable link will result in the referred resource being opened in an editor. The same effect can be obtained by using the action Open file at caret when the caret is in a followable link element.
To position the cursor at the beginning or at the end of the document you can use Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End, respectively.
In Author view, the amount of displayed markup can be controlled using the following dedicated actions:
Full Tags with Attributes - displays full name tags with attributes for both block level as well as in-line level elements.
Full Tags - displays full name tags without attributes for both block level as well as in-line level elements.
Block Tags - displays full name tags for block level elements and simple tags without names for in-line level elements.
Inline Tags - displays full name tags for in-line level elements, while block level elements are not displayed.
Partial Tags - displays simple tags without names for in-line level elements, while block level elements are not displayed.
No Tags - none of the tags is displayed. This is the most compact mode.
The default tags display mode can be configured in the Author options page. However, if the document opened in Author editor does not have an associated CSS stylesheet, then the Full Tags mode will be used.
Block-level elements are those elements of the source document that are formatted visually as blocks (e.g., paragraphs), while the inline level elements are distributed in lines (e.g., emphasizing pieces of text within a paragraph, in-line images, etc). The graphical format of the elements is controlled from the CSS sources via the display property.
A position in a document can be marked with a bookmark. Later the cursor can go quickly to the marked position with a keyboard shortcut or with a menu item. This is useful for easy navigation in a large document or for working on more than one document at a moment when the cursor must move between several marked positions.
A bookmark can be placed with one of the menu items available on the menu
→ → or with the menu item → → or with the keyboard shortcuts associated with these menu items and visible on the menu → . A bookmark can be removed when a new bookmark is placed in the same position as an old one or with the action → → . The cursor can go to a bookmark with one of the actions available on the menu → → .